How to reduce production of stuff?
I see this as one of the foundational challenges of today. And while we have some general lines shaping up around degrowth / post growth scholarship, it's critical to translate this meta level thinking into specific policies and practices for specific industries.
This essay will form a part of my upcoming book, Post Growth Fashion, so it is only available to my paid subscribers - people who directly support the work I do in this area. (Thank you guys❤️)
I will start with some basic nerd stuff but please bear with me - it's important for the point I'm trying to make…
This picture 👇 has nothing to do with the content - it's here for the algorithms because apparently posts with pictures perform better 😂
Efficiency Vs sufficiency basics
There are two approaches - or logics, if you will - that help understand and guide transformation of material throughput processes (production, consumption, waste) of our economic systems: EFFICIENCY and SUFFICIENCY.
Not opposites, efficiency and sufficiency are more like apples and pears. We need both - in different ways.
EFFICIENCY logic is about improving processes and materials to enhance output per unit of production. For example, material innovation can help reduce carbon footprint of a garment. EFFICIENCY is about making BETTER products. This logic says nothing about volumes of production.
SUFFICIENCY logic is about reducing material throughput all together. This thinking, anathema to the dominant neoliberal economic system (aka modern capitalism), emerged as a result of careful inspection of the Planetary Boundaries in the last decade or so. SUFFICIENCY is about producing and consuming (and, as a result , wasting) LESS.
The logic of LESS is a difficult one to sell given that it challenges the very foundations of capitalism. But it also requires much figuring out and definitely a lot a whole lot of PR and good publicity.
This essay aims to contribute to the first objective: figuring it out. It's easy to say: “let's just all be content with less”. But translating sufficiency principles into policies and specific business practices to reduce production is one of the most challenging (and cool) tasks there are today.
Nobody has done this before and people who are part of the system are genuinely confused about how to move forward differently and uneasy about what's coming next in terms of regulation. In the next sections, I explore in more detail how to apply sufficiency principles to downsize the global fashion system.
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